Google Disables Microsoft's YouTube App for Windows Phone Yet Again

Microsoft is already fighting an uphill battle on its Windows Phone platform in terms of fleshing the number of available of apps so that it's on par (or in the vicinity) of Android and iOS, but it's biggest battle to date has been making a YouTube app available to its users. It should be pretty simple, however Microsoft and Google continue to butt heads over the app's coding. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Google has the final say, and right now Google is saying the YouTube app for Windows Phone violates its terms of service.

"Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our terms of service," Google said in a statement. "It has been disabled. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines."

Google's issue with the YouTube app as it stands is that it doesn't always serve ads based on conditions imposed by content creators, or at least that's what the company is telling Microsoft. However, Microsoft claims its YouTube app serves ads using all the metadata available to it.

"We’ve asked Google to provide whatever information iPhone and Android get so that we can mirror the way ads are served on these platforms more precisely. So far at least, Google has refused to give this information to us," Microsoft stated in a lengthy blog post describing its side of the dispute. "We are quite confident that we can solve this issue if Google cooperates, but fixing Google’s concern here is entirely within Google’s control. If Google stops blocking our app, we are happy to work with them on this, entirely at Microsoft’s expense."

Microsoft also claims Google wants the Redmond outfit to transition its YouTube app to HTML5, an "odd request" considering neither of the YouTube apps for Android or iOS are built on HTML5. Nevertheless, Microsoft said it's committed to making the transition long-term, but in the short-term, is attempting to publish a non-HTML5 version.

"It seems to us that Google’s reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can’t give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting. The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it," Microsoft said.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately for Windows Phone users, they're getting caught in the middle of a spat between two tech giants in which there are no winners, only losers.